16 New Effects and Advanced Windows Media Output Expand Creative Control SAN JOSE, Calif.--April 3, 2002--Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today announced a new Plug-In Power Pack for Adobe After Effects 5.5, the essential tool for motion graphics and visual effects. The After Effects 5.5 Plug-In Power Pack incorporates 16 new effects to help video professionals expand creative control and enhance productivity. Building on the already broad set of output options in After Effects 5.5, the Power Pack also introduces Advanced Windows Media support. The After Effects 5.5 Plug-In Power Pack works with Adobe After Effects 5.5 software to efficiently produce motion graphics and visual effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web. A new Windows Media output module offers a comprehensive set of controls to efficiently create Windows Media streaming video content. Users can customize settings, embed metadata, create multi-stream movies, and independently optimize audio and video. The Power Pack supports the Mac OS X platform and includes powerful additions such as the new Calculations plug-in, 3D Glasses, Magnify and Turbulent Displacement. 3D Glasses combine left and right 3D views for stereoscopic viewing. Magnify can scale part of an image, or the entire image far beyond 100 percent while maintaining resolution. Turbulent Displacement uses fractal noise to create turbulent distortions such as flowing water, funhouse mirrors, and waving flags. The Calculations plug-in is similar to the Calculations command in Adobe Photoshop, but allows the same flexibility as other effects in After Effects. Calculations can often replace multiple instances of Shift Channels, Compound Arithmetic and pre-composing. "With the 3D Glasses plug-in, we save time and our clients save money by seeing exactly what the shot will look like in 3D without having to pay for a film recording," says Tim Sassoon, president of Sassoon Film Design. "We depend on this plug-in to provide accurate stereo previews for the large format/special venue stereo films that we work on." The Power Pack includes several other creativity enhancements, including new ways to handle color. Paint Bucket is a non-destructive paint tool that fills a selected area with solid color. Channel Combiner lets users extract and view channels in new ways. Moving shapes and colors between layers has also become easier. Color Link colorizes one layer with the average pixel values of another layer. Eyedropper Fill lets users choose a solid color on the original layer, or a color value from another layer, and apply it to a second layer. The Power Pack also includes several new ways to handle noise and shadows. Noise Alpha adds various types of uniform or squared noise to the alpha channel of a source layer. Noise HLS simulates film grain or adds noise to still or moving footage. Radial Shadow creates a shadow from a point light source over the layer it's applied to, rather than from an infinite light source. For a full list of features found in the After Effects 5.5 Plug-in Power Pack, please visit www.adobe.com/aftereffects. Pricing and Availability The After Effects 5.5 Plug-In Power Pack is expected to ship in the US, Canada and select European countries in May 2002 and will be available for download from the online Adobe Store for $25 US. Additional pricing information can be found online at http://www.adobe.com/store.